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Show Old Prison P4ace of Horror Remains of Century Old Australian Penal Settlement Bring Vividly to Mind the Long Story of Man's Inhumanity to Man. Short of hanging, banishment to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), was the worst penalty inflicted on offenders offend-ers a century ago. The six farm laborers of Tolpuddleu, sentenced for combining in a trade union, whose centenary was commemorated by the trades union congress this August, were sent there. Mr. Stanley Unwin, the publisher, and Mr. Severn Storr have visited the remains of this dread penal settlement set-tlement at Port Arthur In Tasman's peninsula. Near a peaceful beach, shaded by gigantic gum trees, they state in "Two Young Men See the World," they found the ruins of the village and prison with Its exercise yards, pitch-black "silent cell" for prisoners who raved, and long triangular tri-angular cages. "Each man was let loose In a cage to himself for an hour or so a day during which time he could neither speak nor make signs to the man In the next cage to him without earning extra punishment. Here he clanked up and down, up and down, in his heavy irons that tore the skin from his ankles and wrists, more unhappy, poor wretch, than the wildest of wild beasts I" For one man, who had the strength of a gorilla and doubled up ordinary iron bars In his grip, a special cell had been built ; for another, a special run and house, because the horrors of the chain gangs had driven him mad and no one dared go near him It is recorded that sometimes, when two prisoners were confined together they drew lots to decide who should strangle the other and be hanged for it. Across the small bay was another building, Point Puer, where juvenile prisoners were housed. Adjacent was a steep rock overhanging a lagoon, called "Suicide Cliff," because here the lads used to throw themselves to death. Amid the ruins of Port Arthur Ar-thur are the ivy-clad walls of a once beautiful church which one of the convicts designed, buying his freedom free-dom for work that is superb even In its ruined state. Many daring and ghastly attempts V escape were made, but "once the prisoners had contrived to elude their would-be captors and gained the mainland of Tasmania, it meant certain death from starvation In the impenetrable bush, or murder and cannibalism among their own ranks If there were several in their party." Only a few months before the visit of Mr. Unwin and Mr. Storr, a woodman wood-man had made a gruesome discovery on the densely wooded slopes of Mount Arthur a human skeleton with the broken Iron fetters still clinging to arm-bone and leg-bone. Beside it, In a straight row, lay the buttons that had adorned the convict's con-vict's clothes in "those bygone days of harsh tongue and cruel lash." Evidently, Evi-dently, this man had escaped, contrived con-trived by almost superhuman efforts to break his fetters, and struggled on until he collapsed and died. The penitentiary Itself was a huge building of two floors where some of the convicts worked. If a convict rebelled, his Irons were made heavier, his meager diet was reduced, his term of solitary confinement confine-ment prolonged, or he would be put to grind cayenne pepper the worst task of all. Some convicts became warders, and these proved the most brutal of all. "We look back in wonder,'' won-der,'' the two travelers remark, "at the callous inhumanity of those days." Poor Aim Pedestrian I say, you just missed me. Motorist Well, stand still and I'll try again. Answers Magazine. |